Chapter 7290: The Price of Near Perfection

Ves smirked.

He knew it. The Red Association would never be satisfied with the Premium Version Elixirs alone.

Ever since Ves learned that the RA intended to make this product available to external second-class and first-class mech pilots, he felt it was unlikely that the mechers would be fine with using the Premium Version Elixirs alone.

At the very least, their high potential pilots that possessed excellent and promising qualities deserved better. The Premium Version Elixirs apparently possessed a moderate failure rate, which meant that the RA stood to lose a lot of highly skilled and talented pilots.

It may be fine for groups such as the Terrans and the Rubarthans to lose a lot of promising mech pilots. Ves did not put it past the mechers to deliberately conspire to cull the high-level manpower pool of their rivals.

However, that meant that it became important for the RA to master the production of a superior product.

The so-called Excellent Version Elixirs clearly served as the exclusive insider goods for the Association. Their exclusivity was obviously a lot higher, and so was their production cost. Ves could not imagine how much more difficult it was to produce a single vial of this top-end product.

Jovy himself barely knew anything about this product. He could only offer vague descriptions.

"The production volume of Excellent Version Elixirs is currently extremely limited." He said. "Only a handful of our most skilled alchemists are permitted to synthesize them, and they do not have access to enough reagents to maintain a high degree of output. This is because the ultimate formula not only contains an even higher concentration of all of the ingredients used in the Premium Version Elixirs, but also includes extremely rare supplementary ingredients."

"So the Excellent Version is a souped-up version of the Premium Version? What makes them different from each other?"

"The addition of the latter allows the alchemists to suppress the negative side effects to a considerable extent." Jovy briefly explained. "The failure rate is much lower. More importantly, an unsuccessful outcome will also inflict much less damage onto the pilot on average. This is one of the most important requirements for this elixir. In order to eliminate the negative consequences to the greatest possible extent, the alchemists drew upon wondrous materials that possess effects that are powerful and special enough to make a difference. While the ongoing clinical trials have not yet produced too many cases, I can tell you that each test subject who has ingested the Excellent Version Elixir have uniformly broken through."

Even if the same size could only be counted on a single hand, that was already a good result!

Ves enthusiastically leaned forward. "What is the sample size? What is the quality of the test subjects?" "The sample size is too small to draw any definite conclusions. We will be able to provide you with much more rigorous statistics in a couple of years. As for the quality of the mech pilots, they vary considerably, but we have actually been careful in selecting them. No matter whether they were second-class or third- class mech pilots, they already have decades of experience under their belt. They are honorable soldiers and have reached the peak of their original ranks for at least several years. Their maturity levels may not be high, but they are still flexible and retain much of their potential."

That caused Ves to gather a clue from Jovy.

"Are you saying that the elixirs are more effective for more younger mech pilots?"

"You are correct, Ves. Although the pattern is not strong, we have noted that significantly older mech pilots tend to fail more often than normal. There are numerous possible explanations why this may be the case. One theory is that these mech pilots are so ossified and set in their ways that they are mentally incapable of withstanding the extreme changes brought by apotheosis. Their willpower may have also dulled and weakened with the passage of time. Many of them have already turned into parents and grandparents. Having offspring changes one's mentality. Soldiers are much less eager to risk their lives on the battlefield, though this is not always the case."

Simply put, getting older made mech pilots less suitable for this path of willpower cultivation.

The mech community already knew this to an extent.

Most expert candidates and expert pilots tended to emerge fairly early in a pilot's career.

If a pilot had made no progress in the first 50 years of his life, then it was much less likely for him to trigger any breakthroughs in his remaining years.

Whether this was due to the importance of youth or the inevitable weakening brought by aging remained uncertain.

The RA and RC had only just developed the Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs. The alchemists and scientists struggled to understand what they were dealing with. The field of alchemy was still very new as it operated on conditions that hadn't been present on a large scale prior to the Age of Dawn.

Ves grimaced and crossed his arms.

The existence of the Excellent Version Elixir meant that the Red Association essentially possessed the means to guarantee a breakthrough for any pilot with good qualifications.

However, Jovy's description made it clear that it was clearly a product that was made possible by piling up the most expensive reagents in a single vial.

So long as any material possessed a positive effect and did not produce any negative interactions with other ingredients, then the alchemists tossed that into their cauldrons without conducting exhaustive studies.

There was no time to study the properties of each individual reagent and meticulously record how they responded to different conditions.

Ves had the feeling that the alchemists had developed the Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs by trying to restore tattered ancient recipes while also conducting a lot of random trial and error.

This was a very haphazard and unsystematic approach to product development, but so long as the alchemists got lucky, it was possible for them to develop a viable product in a short amount of time.

Red humanity couldn't afford to wait too long.

The T19-AEW26 Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs could only be regarded as first-generation products.

Jovy already admitted that they were experimental products, which meant that it was clearly ethically problematic to make them available to the masses.

At the very least, the Standard Version Elixirs were so dangerous that even Ves probably would not put them up for exchange!

Third-class mech pilots may be the most numerous and least valuable soldiers out there, but they were still human.

Ves did not forget his third-class roots. Jovy's explanation clearly betrayed the Red Association's lack of respect towards third-raters.

It couldn't be helped. The Survivalists especially tended to reduce individual human beings into numbers. Just because they cared about red humanity's survival did not mean they respected individual lives.

It was for that reason that he felt that the motives behind releasing the Standard Version Elixirs crossed a line.

Too many mech pilots would get killed just so that the luckiest and most prepared among them would be able to trigger an early breakthrough.

While these artificial champions could easily be promoted to second-raters and participate in more meaningful battles, they could only do so with the sacrifice of many of their colleagues.

Ves felt it would be much more fair if third-raters could gain access to the Premium Version Elixirs, but so long as the supply of reagents and completed products remained limited, there was no good way to make this possible.

Even if red humanity managed to turn the tide and conquer large swathes of adversary territory, the exchange conditions of the higher-end elixirs might not necessarily improve.

After all, once red humanity acquired more territory, it became a lot easier to expand its population.

More humans translated into more mech pilots. All of those individuals would definitely want to get their hands on the Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs.

Therefore, blindly increasing the supply of materials would not solve the problem.

The best way to make Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs more accessible to all was to tweak the formulas and make them more affordable.

If the alchemical processes could be improved, then it might not take as many expensive materials to produce a single vial.

Ves believed that there was a lot of room for improvement for the first-generation products.

The formulas for the Standard Version, Premium Version and most notably the Excellent Version were so riddled with inefficiencies that they needed to undergo a long process of testing and optimization to make

them cheaper.

It was unrealistic to expect radical improvements to the formulas in the short term. The alchemists and scientists could have focused their efforts on iterating the elixirs over a longer period of time, but they chose to cut their research short in order to get the products ready for mass production.

This meant that the mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan would soon be able to redeem them from the War

Exchange.

Due to their active participation in the Red War, many of them should be flush with war merits.

They should easily be able to redeem a Standard Version Elixir and may be able to get their hands on a Premium Version Elixir if they happened to be frugal.

However, Ves feared that too numerous standard mech pilots ingesting the Low Concentration vials might end up ruining their futures.

He also feared that the ace pilot candidates of the clan might not be able to resist the temptation to use High Concentration vials.

Rosa Orfan was not the only champion who felt frustrated by the lack of progress after becoming a peak expert pilot.

At that point, the demigods most keenly felt how exceptional they needed to be in order to become saints.

If Ves had any say about it, he wanted his Larkinsons to eschew these dangerous elixirs and rely on natural breakthroughs, just as before.

The problem was that the Larkinson Clan risked falling behind the times if it maintained an overly restrictive stance towards Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs.

Even if the Larkinson Clan as a whole rejected their usage, many other competing groups would be happy to put their own mech pilots at risk in order to birth a handful of new champions. Perhaps a future might come where artificial breakthroughs turned into the new standard.

Natural breakthroughs would become increasingly less prevalent once more and more mech pilots ran

out of patience.

Ves found this to be a rather bleak vision of the future.

He became dissatisfied with the lack of high-grade options.

If he was able to get his hands on a dozen or so high-end elixirs, then he should be able to meet the most essential needs of the Larkinson Clan.

"What would it take for someone like me to redeem an Excellent Version Elixir?" He asked. "I know you said that it won't be available to third-parties, but my relationship with the Red Association is a lot better than most of them. I have already contributed much to the mech community and I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon."

Ves feared the answer to his question, but he needed to know.

His friend already anticipated this inquiry. Jovy paused for over a dozen seconds before he slowly

revealed the answer.

"Given the extremely high value and scarcity of the Excellent Version Elixirs... you can only redeem a

single vial for a major favor from a tier 1 galactic citizen."

"WHAT?!"

"You heard that right. I am not exaggerating. Others in a similar position as yours will hear the exact same answer. The reason why the conditions are so stringent is because there is truly not enough of the Excellent Version Elixirs to meet the insanely high demand. Perfection has a price. Or do you think the god pilots and Star Designers themselves have no need for them? They have their own disciples and clients. The orders placed by tier 1 galactic citizens always come first. That is their undeniable privilege. Tier 2 galactic citizens can only obtain a vial of the most high-end version of the Pilot Breakthrough Elixir if you directly trade it from their hands. Do you understand now, Ves?" (More chapters in Buyers club for

TMT)

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